Monday, Oct. 25, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.
With early voting already well under way and nine days left in the 2004 election, Nevada's swing-state status is drawing swarms of the eager and opinionated to hit the streets and the phone lines in a fervent search for voters.
For Doug Starfield, a mechanical engineer from Seattle, the Las Vegas office of America Coming Together will be a home away from home of sorts through Election Day, as he'll likely spend at least 12 hours a day calling prospective John Kerry voters to see if they've voted, or need any help getting to the polls.
Kristin Perrah-Lewis, 35, of Las Vegas, has been going door-to-door since May for the group, and will be joined by an ever-growing band of canvassers in hopes of getting rid of the current administration.
Starfield, an unpaid volunteer, and Perrah-Lewis, a paid leader of a canvassing group, are among the hundreds of workers and volunteers for the Nevada branch of America Coming Together (ACT), which organizers said will grow to more than 1,000 for next weekend's great final push.
"This election is the most important election of our generation," Starfield, 49, said. "If we weren't all here people might not know how important it is they vote."
Carrie Chess, a spokesperson for the group, said the ACT voter mobilization effort is believed to be the largest ever for the state and nation.
The group has knocked on more than 100,000 doors in Clark County since April, and well over 1,000 ACT representatives, paid and volunteer, are expected in Las Vegas Saturday and Sunday.
ACT is a Democratic-leaning, anti-President Bush political action committee and one of the "527" groups, which are named for a section of the tax code it falls under. The group has been active in Las Vegas since launching voter-registration efforts in April.
Now, with the registration deadline past and votes already being cast thanks to early voting, the group has unleashed its army of workers and volunteers for a massive get-out-the-vote effort
Starfield cast an absentee ballot in his home state of Washington so he could spend Election Day and the week leading up to it in Las Vegas -- a battleground state unlike his own.
"This is our last chance to get back our country ... from the continuation of this right-wing agenda," Starfield said.
Armed with cool water, voting information and a Palm Pilot packed with -- and ready for more -- information on individual voters, Perrah-Lewis and her walking partner, Guadalupe Astacio, spent Sunday afternoon knocking on every fifth door or so in a North Las Vegas neighborhood south of City Hall. The Palm Pilots tell the walkers which homes to visit based on screening criteria ACT organizers would not divulge except to say it included newly registered and occasional voters.
"I'm just so happy it's not 115 degrees," Perrah-Lewis said, remembering a sweltering summer.
"This is my full-time everything, this is my mission. ... I didn't take this job for the money. I took it to get people motivated, to make a difference," she said, adding that her husband and 16-year-old daughter also work for ACT-Nevada.
Usually silent on political issues for most of her life, Perrah-Lewis said she was moved to action by a series of situations in her personal life -- her mother's illness and subsequent battle for Medicaid, and her husband being laid off earlier this year.
"I blame this administration for making it even more difficult for the poor and the working class," she said. "This is what drives us.
"I never felt that I could make a difference."
But now she knows she has, through registering new voters during the summer and spurring people to vote now.
Astacio, 46, a union organizer with the Service Employees International Union from New York City, is likewise committed to seeing a new president, and felt her time was best spent in a swing state.
"I left my family for four weeks to come here. I'm here to push Bush out the door in 2004," Astacio said. "New York will probably go to Kerry so they sent me to an important place."
The issues weighing on Astacio's mind were many, including the war in Iraq, education, and health care.
"Lots of people say they like Kerry, and some say they want Bush. I say I want a change," she said.
During about three hours of knocking on doors Sunday, the pair came across about 10 people who said they had either already voted, soon would, or weren't registered.
They also ran into two pairs of college students from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who were in Las Vegas to help go door-to-door for the Kerry campaign. The candidate's campaigns and groups like ACT are barred from coordinating their efforts.
"Because in California all you can do is vote, we want to make a difference in a state in play," said Adrienne Tygenhof, 20, the president of the College Democrats at the school.
Bush supporters who answered their doors for Astacio and Perrah-Lewis got a quick "thank you" and little else, while the others were thanked, and if they hadn't voted, asked if they might need a ride to the polls.
Marietta Williams, 69, cast her ballot early last week, but her husband had not. Williams promised to have her husband cast his soon, and he can also likely expect at least a phone call within the next few days from an ACT representative to see if he has.
As Perrah-Lewis explained, the group won't leave you alone until you vote.
Williams was visited by both the ACT and Kerry supporters Sunday. But she said the added attention doesn't bother her.
"Every four years they come, that's all."
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